Sometimes I go to cover a certain event and I have no idea how it’s going to turn out or what kind of story is going to come out of it. That’s probably the biggest level of mystery that comes with my job of being a small town reporter.
What I love about solving those mysteries is discovering that a particular event or story is so much more than I may have thought.
That was the case last weekend when I found myself down in the community of Lucky Lake. My office got a call a week before about attending a birthday party for a man named Donald Couch, who’d served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. It turned out that Mr. Couch was celebrating his 100th birthday, a major milestone in itself, but the real kicker was that the 435 Squadron, the regimen that he served with, was going to do a fly-by over the village in his honour.
I thought, “Hey, that’s pretty cool. That’ll make for a groovy photo and a neat little write-up on someone reaching such an incredible age.”
It turned out to be so much more, and it’s one of those events that I’m glad I was invited to. This job by its very nature isn’t your typical 9-to-5 gig, and I find that a fair chunk of my weekends aren’t much different from my weekdays, but once I got home from this birthday bash on Saturday afternoon, I found that I was happy to have given up a few hours of my time.
What I walked into at the community hall in Lucky Lake was a celebration of a man who was obviously held in high regard by literally hundreds of people, as nearly 300 of them packed the venue at one point during the event. Donald stood at the front of the stage, a wide smile across his face, and he was saluted by members of the Beechy Legion and even presented with a special Canada 150 medal by the Vice-President of the Saskatchewan Command.
And the fly-by over the entire village? Definitely something that had to be seen to be believed. A massive Hercules transport plane careened over Lucky Lake not once, not twice, but three times as an equally-massive crowd stood outside in -22 weather with their phones and cameras. Heck, the plane even dropped birthday balloons and streamers and baked goods.
Not many organizations would do this for someone, especially not when the alleged cost of running such an aircraft is roughly $10,000 per hour, which is what I overheard amongst the excited-yet-freezing crowd.
But for someone like Mr. Couch, a decorated World War II veteran who spent time in several provinces as well as overseas, and who was celebrating becoming Canada’s newest centenarian? Not a problem at all.
The whole thing was rather spellbinding. I mean, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen in small town Saskatchewan, right? Obviously, all the right elements came together at just the right time. Perhaps a solid indicator of the high level of emotion that this symbolic gesture carried is the fact that a video clip I uploaded to this newspaper’s Facebook page has amassed more than 10,000 views at the time I wrote this week’s column.
I think it comes down to just one thing: respect. Respect for the men and women who came before us to answer the call that very few could, an admiration of these “models of a tougher generation”, and respect for the contributions they’ve made so that all of us in 2018 can enjoy the leisure and lifestyles that we do.
I was able to sneak a few minutes with Donald during his party, which in itself wasn’t easy because there seemed to be an ever-present line of people wanting to shake his hand and wish him well. The man that I met that day was someone who was happy, easy-going, but perhaps most of all, completely aghast that this event had turned into such a large and sprawling celebration of his life. In my experience, it’s the oldest of people who tend to be the most humble and modest, and…well….Donald *had* just turned 100.
He was happy to talk about reaching such a milestone age, and his eyes lit up when he spoke of his time in the air force. I even asked him what kind of advice he’d give people on how to reach 100 years old, and his response? “Eat good, have a good rest, and stay out of drugs.”
Simple, but effective.
We should all be so lucky to live as long as Mr. Couch and have so many people around us who care.
In these current times of tension surrounding Canada's veterans in their fight against the Liberal government for support, something like Saturday’s party for Donald is a reminder of how important it is to recognize what these men and women have done for us.
And no, Mr. Prime Minister, they are not “asking for more than we can give.”
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
